


The Kids Aren't Alright

by ClarkeRipley



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Runaways (TV 2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Before Ultron, F/F, F/M, Set after Captain America Winter Soldier, very domestic Deanoru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 18:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17228834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClarkeRipley/pseuds/ClarkeRipley
Summary: Pepper Potts tries to reconnect with lost family only to stumble into something that would challenge even the Avengers





	The Kids Aren't Alright

**Author's Note:**

> Warning Spoilers about Marvel's Runaways:  
> For those not familiar with Marvel's Runaways it's about a group of teenagers who are the children of some of the most powerful corporate,scientific and religious leaders in California and the USA as whole. They discover that their parents charity organization PRIDE is a front used to commit horrific crimes including the murder of many children. When they unravel the mystery they discover the one behind it all is an alien being called Jonah. He helped their parents become who they are in exchange for their service. He is from a race called Gibborim who are beings of pure energy and nearly impossible to kill. Being who can posses any human

Pepper Potts turned off the TV feeling shame deep within her soul. After invasion of England and the HYDRA uprising which essentially destroyed SHIELD things had calmed down. There hasn’t been a major incident for months and the Avengers did mostly disaster relief and charity events. This has made the media hungry and when it was discovered that PRIDE one of the most respected charity organizations in the world has been a front for a sociopathic death cult the fallout had been immense. Some of the biggest corporations on Earth which combined were worth even more then Stark industries and the entire Gibborim Church were involved in the mess and were being crucified in the media and in the government. And if this story wasn’t juicy enough already the fact that it was PRIDE’s own children that took them down made the journalists practically rabid.

And that’s where Pepper Pots deep shame came from. She knew one of those kids. In fact one of those kids was her own niece. Karolina Dean. Pepper’s father and Karolina’s grandfather had been brothers but after David Ellerh created his cult the family was never the same again. Her father cut off David completely. Disgusted and ashamed from sharing the same family name as a cult leader her father had changed their family to Potts and forbidden all contact. Even after the cult grew into a respected (or at least politically feared) religion her father had refused to have anything to do with it. After his death Pepper had considered contacting her cousin Leslie a few times but she didn’t want to take the risk. Pepper was just breaking into the tech industry and being related to someone like Leslie could be a black mark on her career

After landing the position and Tony’s assistant and finding out that he didn’t care at all about such things she had finally reached out. Karolina’s birth had seemed like the perfect excuse to finally connect but Leslie had not exactly been welcoming of the idea. She gave Pepper of the most politely worded fuck you’s she had ever received. Her further attempts at connection and the few run ins they had at charity galsa had also been rebuffed and she only got polite thank you notes for the birthday and Christmas presents she would send for Karolina. She had followed her niece appearance in the media and interviews before this entire mess and she always seemed like a kind and happy girl, one who gave the distinct vibe of a wide eyed innocence reminding her in some ways of Steve Rogers

This had all changed now. All the kids had been relentlessly hounded by the media. As soon the government unfroze their assets they drastically changed their parent’s companies. The young Nico Minoru had changed Wizard’s entire business model. Giving fair wages and good working conditions to all their factory workers, made far more affordable products, provided free internet and communication services for poor countries and neighborhoods. Alex Wilder turned the real estate holdings of Geoffrey Wilder Construction into affordable housing for the poor and Sanctuaries for homeless children. He also became the new head of PRIDE and invited many prominent philanthropists on it’s board in an attempt to make organization a transparent force for good. Chase Stein followed Tony’s example and severed all of Nemo’s military contracts. He also changed his company’s policy and focused on green energy, affordable electric cars and providing renewable technology. Gert Yorkes and Molly Hernandez took Synergy Bionegineering in an even more extreme direction. Not only drastically lowering the prices of their medical products but also buying the patents of other vital medicine and making sure that they are affordable to everybody.

While every halfway decent person praised their actions the market wasn’t so charitable. All the companies took massive hits with their stocks taking a dive and losing billions of dollars. Not that the kids seemed to care. They took all in stride dismissing or outright firing their boards of directors and anyone else trying to stop them from changing their companies. 

With Karolina things had been different. Apparently in her madness her cousin Leslie had made their followers believe that her daughter was their Messiah and now she had to deal with this. Dismantle an entire massive cult. And if this wasn’t bad enough she was also awarded custody of her newborn sister so now at a mere eighteen years olds she had essentially become a mother. This alone would have been enough for the media to focus on her but the fact that she was also in a relationship with the heir of Wizard Nico Minoru practically drove the scumbag journalists over the edge. While the other kids had mostly been hounded by mainstream news and the stories were focused on their destructive financial decisions Karolina had the unfortunate fate of being targeted not only by mainstream news but also by every gossip magazine and every tabloid. Every time Pepper saw another picture of a tired Karolina trying to shield her baby and her girlfriend sending a death glare at all the paparazzi it made her heart hurt

She wanted desperately to help them but she didn’t know how to do it. Her attempts to reach out had been blocked by an army of lawyers and secretaries. As soon as anyone heard her name they would politely dismiss her. And not just Karolina’s people but all of the PRIDE kids or as the media dubbed them The Runaways. She could only assume that Karolina was mad and wanted nothing to with her and she couldn’t blame her since she was mad at herself as well. As much as Tony and all the other kept reassuring her that there was nothing she could have done Pepper couldn’t help but feel guilty about leaving her niece alone in a death cult. Even when Karolina had been on the run from her parents she hadn’t reached out to Pepper. She must think that she was as bad and uncaring as Leslie

“Still agonizing over your niece” said Tony as he sauntered in their apartment” You have the “I think I failed my niece“ face again

“Someone came at her with a knife. She was holding the baby and they still went after her” mumbled Pepper. The news had been running the footage non-stop for the last half an hour. The insane attacker hadn’t even made it near Karolina before the bodyguards had disabled him but Karolina’s scared face as she clutched the baby while her girlfriend stood over them protectively was still playing inside Pepper’s brain every time she closed her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to call her , to use JARVIS to contact her directly and bypass all the middle men but she guessed that the last thing Karolina and her family needed now was for her to bother them

“Then you will be happy to know that I finally got through and arranged a meeting with them” said Tony smugly  
“You did?” asked an astonished Pepper. 

“The Stark charmed managed to finally get through to the girlfriend” at Pepper’s skeptical look that he had managed to charm the scary goth girlfriend of her niece Tony winced” Ok so maybe I might have offered for Stark industries to partner up with Wizard in a few ventures that were too good to pass up”  
Pepper was torn between being angry at the fact that Tony went over her head as CEO and probably gave away tens of millions of dollars in profits and being touched that he would do something like this for her. Anger gave away to happiness at the prospect of finally meeting her niece and she kissed him

Twenty two hours later they were finally standing in front of the Dean Mansion and Pepper had never been more nervous. Just last month she made a deal worth over twenty billion and this had been as easy as pie compared to this. As the doors opened and Tony drove them inside Pepper began ruffling through all the presents she had brought for the baby, for her…grand niece. Oh god she was a grand aunt. It only hit her just now

“So before we meet them I might have skipped a few details” said Tony in his “I did something bad and I hope you won’t be too angry at me voice”

“Tony what did you do?” asked a suspicious Pepper

“So you remember how I told that I convinced the girlfriend to let them meet us….? I might have been slightly untruthful about this….they may not be expecting us”

“Tony!” 

“Come it will be ok. Everybody loves a surprise family reunion. Like in that Merry Springer show”

“It’s Jerry Springer and have you even watched it? Those things never end well. Wait how did we even get in here? Did you hack their security system!?”at Tony’s nervous grin Pepper nearly lost it” TONY”

Nico was snuggling next to her girlfriend and their baby for a heavenly afternoon nap when the alarms activated. They both rose in panic with Nico immediately calling the Staff of One to her side and Karolina’s fist began glowing while clutching the baby tightly with the other hand. They both quickly went into the panic room that the Wizard’s technician had installed in their apartment.

It was a daily occurrence for some nutjob to try and break into their house. Most of them were simply Gibb members who wanted to come and worship Karolina and in a few cases Xavin who was still creeping around every once in a while. This wasn’t a big deal and merely tripped the outer sensors but this? This was a level red alert. Someone had actually disabled their security system. Only a few people in the world had the knowledge and resources to take out the custom made Wizard security system chief among them…..Jonah and his family. After their last battle they had manage to expel the aliens from their parents and Alex’s bodies but not destroy them. They haven’t heard from them for more than an year but they were still out there and none of the Runaways had any idea what they were planning. Xavin has been unsuccessfully trying to track them just like the Wizards surveillance but none of them had found anything. Who knew what new host bodies they had and what resources they had at their disposal now?

“It’s…..Tony Stark and Pepper Pots” said a confused Nico Minoru as she checked the security camera. Quickly activating the X-Ray sensors she saw that there was no Giborrim inside of them

“What on Earth are they doing here?” exclaimed Karolina as she gently rocked the baby

“They were pretty insistent on getting in contact with us and I heard that Tony Stark has a hard time taking no for an answer” said Nico darkly

They had all been worried when Stark Industries began to push hard for contact with the Runaways. If I had been just with Nico or with Chase they would have thought that it was just corporate business but their insistence on contacting Karolina as well had raised some serious concern. They had managed to keep their abilities hidden when they finally exposed their parents. Their parents had also helped kept their secrets because for all their evil they still held a twisted love for their kids. Hiding things from the feds had been relatively easy but the Avengers? Who knew what they would do if they found out that Karolina and the baby were aliens. Not to mention Nico’s and Molly’s abilities or Old Lace

“If he was here to do something violent he wouldn’t take his CEO right?” asked a wary Karolina. They had feared that the government or Avengers might come after them because of what they could so they had been expecting someone like Tony Stark to appear one day. But Pepper Pots? Why on Earth would she be here?

They called him Brother and his new host had a human name as well but his true title was The Heir. For countless millennia he had been the Son of the Magistrate. The rightful heir of the Gibborim and then…those filthy peasants had risen and exiled them among the stars. Their plan to gather allies and crush the rebellion had come to a halt when their ship crashed into the primitive planet called Earth.. Trapped deep beneath the earth they waited patiently for more then twenty millennia until Father freed them only for those pathetic meatbags called humans to destroy their ship. But that had not been the worst news for the Family. Father had sired two bastard half breeds with the meatbags. To bring even further humiliation it and it’s friends had manage to expel them from the perfect host they found forcing them to hide. The once proud Royal family fleeing from meatbags and half breeds! It was unheard off.

They had found other hosts of course. Hosts which in many ways had been better then the previous ones and while the rest of the family was willing to ignore the so called Runaways and concentrate on rebuilding their ship with their newfound resources he would not take this humiliation lying down. He would have his revenge and he would eliminate his father’s bastard half breed. None would ever dare to contest his right to the throne.

For weeks he had been monitoring the house of his half breed siblings waiting for an opportunity to strike but alas their defenses had been too strong. The younglings had adapted and the Heir could sense the many weapons hidden in various places just waiting to be activated as soon as they detected one of them. He had been testing the security system for weeks but the code had been designed to detect Gibborim tactics and all his efforts had proved futile. But then these two new meatbags had come and done the hard work for him. They seemed familiar but then again all meatbags looked alike. And so thousands of miles away the Heir smiles viciously when he activated the weapon that had been positioned outside the house. Before he got his hands on it this had been a primitive weapons platform designed by the meat bags but he had turned into something beautiful and deadly. They would all die today

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it :) I thought it would be interesting to connect the two universes through Pepper. Did she just unlock Pandora's box or did she help to save them all? Who knows?
> 
> Sorry for any spelling and grammar mistakes. English is my third language


End file.
